John Manning's The Emblem charts the rise and evolution of the emblem from its earliest manifestations to its emergence as a genre in its own right in the sixteenth century, and through its various reinventions to the present day.

The main aim of the work is to present emblematics in Hungary in its European context, and to show the reciprocal influence between that phenomenon and mainstream literature. The description of the theoretical and historical development in Hungary is supplemented by a series of case studies examining the effect of emblematics upon various literary genres. The final chapter analyzes the link between literary emblematics and the visual arts by looking at a specific example. As in most European countries, emblematics in Hungary is part of a complex labyrinth of literary modes of thought and expression. A relative poverty of theoretical writing went hand in hand with a considerable range of emblematic practice. The emblem proved to be a transitional form between the period when signs and motifs were regarded as having specific and fixed meanings and the modern period when we have developed a different and shifting concept of language and meaning. At the same time as emblems began to penetrate the more popular levels of national culture and literature, they also became more specialized. Hungarian emblematics used, for the most part, existing pictorial and textual combinations of pictures and texts. They employed the emblem notably in genres and texts of the genus demonstrativum, which referred to matters which were topical at the time.

Emblem books--books containing pictorial representations whose symbolic meaning is expressed in words--were produced in great quantities and in numerous languages during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Because literary critics and art historians increasingly recognize the importance of the emblem in Renaissance and Baroque studies, this book answers the need for a bibliography listing the locations of all known emblem books in Spanish, as well as those translated into Spanish, written by Spaniards in other languages, and polyglot editions that contain a Spanish text. Covered in this bibliography are all emblem books published from the beginning to the end of the Spanish Golden Age, as well as a wide range of secondary sources on relevant subjects, among them mythography, paradoxography, numismatics, fetes, funerals, proverbs, apothegms, antiquarianism, collecting, and pertinent studies in art history and architecture. Providing call numbers for library locations, information on facsimile reprints, and microform editions, the work is extensively indexed--by date and place of publication, by printers and booksellers, by authors and artists, and by dedicatees, as well as by subject.

Emblems—pictorial designs with accompanying mottoes and epigrams— helped to shape virtually every form of verbal and visual communication in the West during the sixteenth and seventh centuries. A recent re-awakening of scholarly interest in the emblem has brought to light the difficulty of locating and consulting the unorganized mass of available material. Recognizing the need for a large-scale systematic index to the emblem, the editor organized a symposium at McGill University to discuss the possibilities of preparing such an index. The resulting papers by six symposium participants— Barbara Becker-Cantarino, Peter M. Daly, Peter Erb, G. Richard Dimler, Lorelei Robins, and Alan Young—contribute to our knowledge of the emblems of Peacham and Corrozet, the Dutch love emblems, the Jesuit emblem, and emblems used in books of mediation. The essays also discuss the problems and procedures involved in preparing an Index Emblematicus, a work which would serve scholars working in the fields of literature, art, culture, religion, history, and the languages. The volume is richly illustrated with over forty emblem reproductions.

The literature of the 16th and 17th centuries was informed by the symbolic thought embodied in the mixed art form of emblems. This study explores the relationship between the emblem and the literature of England and Germany during the period.

The ten papers in this volume were all presented at the first International Conference "The European Emblem", held in Glasgow in August, 1987 under the auspices of the Society for Emblem Studies. The conference included papers discussing most of the major European languages in which emblem books flourished, and the papers selected for the presented volume represent something of the variety and scope of current scholarship in this field. Subjects dealt with include a protoemblematic Latin translation of the Tabula Cebetis, the Emblematum Liber by Andreas Alciat, the earliest reception of the 'Ars Emblematica' in Dutch, the career of Thomas Palmer, Daniel Cramers 80 Emblemata moralia nova, and the Emlimata of Polockij. The papers selected for this volume demonstrate the vigor and variety of work in this field, whilst also suggesting some of the directions and opportunities for further research.